Stories left behind ... Helmets abandoned by Argentine soldiers at Goose Green. Photograph: PA
Anniversaries are particularly beloved by two types of people - journalists and publishers. It's now 25 years since the Falklands War. Guess what?
The book being advertised in London Bridge station at the moment is Four Weeks in May: The Loss of HMS Coventry. Although a relatively major incident in the war - the loss of yet another modern warship supposedly capable of defending itself against hostile aircraft tossing bombs - it's beginning to seem that for every ship hit or sunk, there's a memoir.
They've all got cool names, though. Such as: Through Fire and Water: HMS Ardent - The Forgotten Frigate of The Falklands War. Or: Bomb Alley, Falkland Islands1982: Aboard HMS Antrim at War. There's also Ordeal by Exocet, about HMS Glamorgan, and even The Captain's Steward: Falklands, 1982. OK, so the last one's not so dramatic. And you have to wonder whether this book, from a man who was largely engaged in pressing shirts and making tea, can really shed that much light on the war.
If you're interested in what happened and why, there's no better source than the horse's mouth: Admiral Sandy Woodward's One Hundred Days. It's well written, full of suspense (although - spoiler-warning - you may already know that the Brits won) and gives the lie to the idea that it was anything other than a close-run thing. Memorably, he recalls sending a frigate into San Carlos Water prior to the landings to see if there were any minefields - without minesweepers in the fleet, the only way he could be certain it was clear was if the ship returned intact. The captain, guessing his intentions, drolly asked: "Perhaps you would like me to sail up and down a bit?"
The anecdotes are probably the best thing about it: such as the time he crept up on an American carrier during a night training exercise in the Gulf by stringing bright lights round his destroyer and responding to increasingly insistent radio challenges in a thick Indian accent. But above all it's an honest account of the hopes and fears (not least of the British media) of a senior commander at war. I read it on a sailing trip, and couldn't put it away.
I guess I'm a fan of learning military history from the top down, and largely take the view that commanders and senior officers are more likely to know what happened and why than the people they command. I'm interested in the big picture, and usually it makes for a better story.
I'd also recommend Brigadier Julian Thompson's No Picnic: 3 Commando Brigade in the South Atlantic, 1982, for that reason, alongside Sea Harrier Over the Falklands: A Maverick at War by Sharkey Ward - with three air-to-air kills, Sharkey Ward was not only the leading Harrier pilot, but the first to demonstrate that the sub-sonic Harrier could compete with faster and ostensibly superior Argentine jets.
Give Vulcan 607 by Rowland White a miss. After all, that's largely what the Vulcans did. Never was so little contributed by so many, although it's still an interesting account.
But the Falklands, like all wars, wasn't without a human cost. The last word surely has to go to Simon Weston - don't bother with his more recent day-by-day account of the war, but read Walking Tall. Then you'll know why the sacrifices are really worth remembering 25 years on.
